A New Direction for Humanity

The rattle of Xiac's doors and familiar sound of a food cart pulled Shae out of her apparently quite shallow slumber. She yawned and sat up, kicking the soft fluffy towel she used as a blanket to the side.

"Hello Reep," she spoke through a sleepy haze, giving her a friendly gesture and a smile.

"Hello Shae. Do you know when the Vakita is getting back?" She asked as she wheeled the food cart in and left it near Xiac's desk. Her voice seemed tense, and tired. Shae knew that she worked really hard compared to the other Rei-sa she'd seen. Reep barely ever even left her desk.

"Nope," She rubbed her eyes and felt around for her tablet, which she found quite easily lying on the floor next to her mat. She'd been trying to time her sleep for when Xiac wasn't in her suite, since it meant less interruptions.

Reep just sighed and turned to leave. "Things would be so much easier if she would tell me..." she spoke to herself very rapidly in a way that, as far as Shae could tell, approximated muttering.

"U-Um...! Reep!" Shae called out to her as she started to leave.

Reep turned and looked at her curiously. "Yes?"

"Can I ask you a... personal question?" she struggled with how to phrase it in Rei-sa.

"That's not how you use that word, Shae." Reep immediately shut her down.

"It's about the Vakita and me. Help me out a little?" Shae grumbled, and she saw Reep's expression soften.

"Alright, I have to wait for the Vakita anyway. What is the problem?" Reep sat down cross-legged next to Shae's mat.

"So, uhh... the Vakita and I have been... mating..." She mumbled, trailing off at the end.

"Yes. I know. Everybody probably assumes so, too." Reep laughed a little and gave her a warmly condescending look. It was a look she personally inspired in the Rei-sa quite often.

Shae's eyes went wide and she physically recoiled ever so slightly. "W-What? Everbody? But... that's... isn't that... strange?"

"Yes. But, everything is strange, in this solar system. We are far from home, rules need to be rewritten, and, if anybody is allowed to rewrite them, it's Vakita Xiac. Besides, your species is primitive and foolish, not unattractive. It only makes sense for mating to be a part of your role here, even if it's just informal mating."

"Wait. So, humans are... attractive?" Shae suppressed a little giggle. She suspected that Reep had just misspoken.

"That is the common attitude, yes. I always thought it was humorous. We told so many stories about aliens, had so many ideas as to what you'd look like. As it has turned out, you are as beautiful as any fantastical tale. Especially you, Shae. There were... a number of inappropriate comments made about you, whilst we had you in a holding cell."

Shae was quiet for a few moments, as Reep's words sunk in. This was, in a way, expected of her. And yet, Ji'rai, the most powerful person in the solar system, had been asking her. Letting Shae go at her own pace. She felt a surge of affection for her, above and beyond what was already there. The part about humans being foolish and primitive, well... that stung a little, but it was hard to argue. Part of what Reep had said stuck with her though. The way she'd said 'informal' mating felt notable somehow.

"So, is there a significant difference between formal and informal mating?" she asked.

"Yes. Very. If you have to ask, then I would guess that you haven't formalized anything yet." Reep snickered at her a little, her tone playful.

"So... if we formalize it... what happens?"

"Well, normally when Rei-sa formally mate we go through... a phase. We fight for dominance. The winner is the..." Reep paused, her expression thoughtful "You... that word will be outside of your understanding... Hmm."

Shae blanched, her eyes going wide. Fighting a Rei-sa didn't sound like the safest thing she could be doing. "Uhh..."

"One has command over the other, in the relationship. But, only inside the relationship, not outside. It is hard to explain, and it is different for every person, every family, every relationship." Reep ignored her distress or maybe didn't even notice it.

"Reep... Ji'rai could just crush me if she wanted..." Shae finally got a word in.

"Yes, for you two, it would just be ceremonial, but that is not unheard of In some cases, if a person is of significantly lower station, they aren't permitted even a chance to overwhelm the other. I suppose it wouldn't make sense for us to use our full strength when mating with a Human, especially a small one like you. Perhaps a large human and a small Rei-sa? That might be fair enough."

"So... what do I do?" Shae asked, trying to pull Reep out of her tangent.

"Well, Vakita Xiac knows what she is doing. Go ahead and just trust her. And... if you are pinned down and told to yield, do not struggle. Go limp. Especially with Vakita Xiac" Reep smiled and patted Shae on the head as she stood up to leave.

"Wait... especially with Ji'rai? What does that mean?" Shae raised her hand to reach out to Reep.

"I've worked for the Vakita a very long time. I hear things. Just go limp, trust me." Reep laughed and left her alone in the room, sweating a bit of a cold sweat. She was quite certain that the context of the Rei-sa word "hear" that Reep had used implied that she'd physically heard what these "things" were, not learned them through rumour. She wondered how thick the walls were.

She sighed and grabbed her tablet, double checking when Xiac had scheduled her next appointment. Her calendar showed that her etiquette tutor wasn't for another thousand units of time, about four hours or so, so she laid back down to nap some more.

"Are you awake, Shae?" Xiac's voice roused her. It felt like only an instant had passed but Shae wasn't actually sure how long she'd been asleep for.

"Yes, Ji'rai, whadda ya... what do you need?" she yawned and sat up, accidentally addressing her in english at the start then switching immediately back over to Rei-sa.

Xiac was at her desk, one of the little food carts was there, opened with the contents set out for her. "Come over here. I want you to try this food.

Shae squeaked a little in excitement and scrambled to her feet. She hadn't eaten solid food since her trip planetside two weeks ago. She kneeled down in front on Xiac's squat little desk and looked down at the plate Xiac had set aside for her. Some kind of leafy plant analogue was set out there, it had one long stem and red brown leaves extended out from it in a continuous spiralling pattern. When she looked closer, the colours of the leaves seemed to shift around subtly, like she was looking at a gentle light shimmering off a body of water.

"Don't eat the stem. Try the leaves." Xiac took a bite out of what looked like a chunk of meat and watched Shae calmly, but with interest. Shae found herself wondering if this would be recorded and sent back to some Rei-sa scientist somewhere. It probably would, she was as much a science experiment as she was a diplomat.

Shae reached out and tried to rip off one of the leaves off but it proved to be too rubbery and she just ended up with some weird dust rubbing off on her hands. As Xiac chuckled at her, she leaned down and tried to bite a piece off, her teeth easily tearing off a chunk of the leaf. It had a strange, slightly sour taste to it, and as she chewed a kind of a jelly like substance was released from the inside that tasted kind of like of onions, except it dissolved in her mouth. She looked down and saw more of the viscous yellowish goo oozing from the place where she'd bitten into the leaf. It was foreign and weird and she resisted her body's immediate nausea caused strictly by how alien it was, and gave it a chance. Her gag reflex settled down quickly enough and the food stayed in her stomach.

"It's a bit weird, but I like it." Shae smiled at Xiac and took another bite. Ultimately, even if she hadn't liked how it tasted, she'd probably have eaten it just so that she didn't have to have her only nutrition come from when she drank that grey sludge.

"Good. I was concerned that we wouldn't be able to find anything for you. The project to find food for you was not necessarily very high priority, so I thought it would take longer." Xiac gave her a warm smile, and the two of them ate in silence for several minutes before Xiac's terminal blipped at her.

"Lhas wants to see you. I adjusted your schedule." Xiac looked over at one of her terminals and Shae saw the tiny flicker of movement from her eyes that indicated that she was inputting some information.

"I'll look in a moment, Ji'rai," Shae licked some of the weird dust off her fingers, and winced at how bitter it was. She reminded herself not to repeat the process and starting biting off more pieces of the alien plant, forcing herself to chew and swallow slowly. She was normally a voraciously fast eate, but if she started feeling queasy she wanted to have the leeway to stop immediately before she... well, hopefully if she felt sick she'd only throw up and not die a horrible death.

"Be quick. He keeps pestering me. Apparently there is some sort of catastrophe. Knowing Lhas it is—" Xiac trailed off into a string of expressions that didn't sound terribly flattering, even though Shae only got the vaguest gist of it. Her metaphorical dialect tutor had been super helpful but interpreting something from an actual conversation and not a written example was still quite a bit beyond her.

She smiled earnestly at Xiac and shifted into her normal eating mode, devouring several of the spiral leaves in quick order. As she polished off the second leaf, Xiac laughed at her. Shae looked up, questioningly as she wiped her mouth.

"You are a cute eater, Riten. Go quiet Lhas for me, the tram will take you straight there."

"I'll handle it, Ji'rai," Shae smiled back at her instead of questioning how it was that she was that she was eating 'cutely.'

She headed over to Xiac's doors and shoved them open, exerting herself a bit to do so - the doors weren't built with her in mind. Reep wasn't there at her desk, and so she walked straight through the little foyer to the tram station. A tram was already waiting there for her, no doubt called ahead of time. She stepped into it and the doors snapped shut immediately, controlled by an external force. Without waiting for her to brace herself, the tram jolted into motion, lurching violently off to the side. She yelped, stumbled, and then fell to her knees at the sudden shift in momentum. Her knee scraped against the unpadded metal floor and she winced a little in pain.

"Shit... " she grumbled, swearing in english as she inspected the damage. It was nothing, but she knew her Ji'rai would fuss over it. Before she could even complain properly, the tram jerked to a halt, and she fell back onto her ass, skidding several inches across the hard metal floor of the tram.

"Fuck you, you cunt elevator!" she yelled angrily, still using english to vent her frustrations as the door whooshed open. When she looked up at the door, Lhas stood there, looking down at her. Was that... an angry expression, when the Rei-sa sucked their lips in slightly like that? No, they usually tilted their heads to the side when they were mad. She just looked up at him blankly, hand covering her knee.

"That is not how you pronounce that word," He informed her, his tone not revealing much to her about what that expression was supposed to be.

"No... it's English. I just fell on the tram when it stopped..." she grumbled indignantly, rising to her feet and rubbing her scraped knee. It would be nice to have some sense of where things were on the ship, some scope of how far she'd have to travel. If she'd known Lhas' office was only about a ten second trip from the Vakita's suite then she probably wouldn't have fallen.

There was another Rei-sa in the small office and as Shae approached them, they had their face buried in a terminal. "She's here," they said into it, with rather rough sounding English, and turned a screen towards Shae with Xhiang's face on it.

"Miss Ga— You're naked." The Premier's face flushed red with embarrassment.

"Yeah, I can't really go to a clothing store up here," Shae did her best to play it cool, and turned to Lhas to speak in Rei-sa. "Change the display so it only shows here and above," She gestured towards her neck. Lhas gave her a perplexed look but turned to the display and probably changed some settings with his irises. "There. How's that?" Shae asked.

"Err. Better, thank you," the premier answered. Through all the things that Xhiang had seen the day Shae had gone down, she'd totally kept her cool. It was kinda silly that boobs would be the thing to crack her composure. Humans were honestly so frustrating. "We've had an accident with the equipment at the mine. We're trying to get all the injured people to a hospital but we don't have... Ah... I was hoping perhaps you could assist us? A ship, or something?"

Shae nodded to her, then turned to Lhas. "They need transport to one of their medical centers for the injured. We can help, right?"

"Oh. One of their medical centers. Yes, I have shuttles at my disposal, we can do that. I thought they were asking to bring their wounded up here. I would never have gotten approval for that."

It was seventeen hours later, seventeen hours of coordinating, translating, and continually chiding pilots for accelerating too fast with injured people in their shuttle, when Shae finally wasn't able to stop herself from reflexively expressing her exhaustion in an obvious enough manner for Xhiang to notice.

"Have you slept, Miss Gallant?" she asked, her concerned tone shifting from that of a leader dealing with a crisis to something more personal.

"Oh, well... sort of? I don't really do a nightly sleep anymore I just kind of take naps in the open spots in my schedule unless Ji'rai wants to spend time with me. Short answer: no, I haven't. I'm tired as fuck."

"Well, I appreciate it, Miss—"

"Shae, please. Just Shae." She grumbled, and rubbed her face in annoyance and fatigue.

"Shae. If I might ask, why are you doing all this? I don't think I could ever possibly get my staff to work a seventeen hour shift and we're in a post end-of-society situation down here." Xhiang's voice was suddenly quiet, as though she was afraid someone would overhear.

"Seems like the right thing to do. I dunno, I was always really upset that things weren't better between the two of us. Seemed like first contact should have been a big civilizational shift but instead it was just more of the same, stupid shit," Shae smiled ruefully, feeling the weight of the role she'd taken up, the role that had almost been thrust upon her. In that moment it felt... fine, though. She could do this. "Problem was us. All we knew was Empire, of course we'd freak out when it looked like we might be on the other end of things. We only knew abuse, so we expected it."

"Well... I'll wish you luck with that, Shae. Thank you. Get some sleep, if you're allowed. I can handle things from here and you're about to collapse." Xhiang gave her an earnest smile, and closed the connection. As it did, Shae suddenly felt the tiniest edge of embarrassment that she'd gotten so weird and philosophical, but there was nothing to do about it now.

Shae sighed to herself and sifted through her terminal to her schedule. She paused, and then groaned when she saw it. She was scheduled to see her etiquette tutor in under two hours Four hundred and thirty five units of stupid Rei-sa time. She sat there, grumbling to herself, her mind shifting between possibilities. Go to the tutor and suffer through it? Fall dead on the floor right now? Try to sneak back into the suite to get some sleep? Call Xiac to ask if she can reschedule? She ended up calling Xiac.

"Yes, Shae?" Xiac's voice came after a minute or two of delay.

"Ji'rai I think I have to adjust my schedule a little bit. I'm exhausted and I need to get some sleep." She suppressed a yawn as she asked.

"I will trust your judgement on that. Will rescheduling the next three appointments suffice?" She didn't sound annoyed, at least, not as far as Shae could tell, so that was nice.

"Yes, thank you. I'm going to head back now." She'd barely finished the sentence when the connection closed. Xiac was probably busy, so she wasn't surprised at the terseness.

When she arrived back in the room, Xiac was speaking softly into one of her terminals at the desk, looking perturbed. Her eyes flickered towards Shae for a moment, and she thought she saw a happy expression on Ji'rai's face for a moment before she went back to work. Somehow, that made the hellish seventeen hour death march worth it

***

When Shae awoke, her terminal was beeping at her. She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes as she got up into a sitting position. A quick glance around told her that Xiac was gone again. She picked up her still-beeping terminal and checked the alert. It was a reminder, her language tutor was soon. She'd slept for ten hours. Her sleep schedule on this ship had mostly consisted of periodic small naps so to find out that she'd slept for that long was actually a little surprising. She yawned and stretched for as long as she could without blatantly stalling, and got up to go to the little bathroom. Reep was gone too, and Shae couldn't help but feel as though the oversized Rei-sa rooms were cavernous and empty with only her to occupy them.

She peed and had a quick shower, languishing under the powerful spray of warm water for as long as she dared. When she dragged herself out in front of a mirror, she paused and scowled at what she saw. Her hair was so long. She'd not had her hair this shaggy and grown out since she'd rebelled against the obligation to get a boy haircut as a teen and then not gotten it cut until she'd transitioned some years later. She made a mental note to ask Ji'rai if there was some way to get her hair cut without literally flying her down to Earth as she buckled her collar back on. She arrived at the meeting room full of tables a little early and got herself set up to wait for her tutor.

"Miss Shae, nice to see you." her tutor Ipla arrived a little late, setting his things down on the table and sitting right next to her, rather than across from her. About half of them chose to sit next to her, and she wasn't sure if there was any significance to the act. She made a mental note to ask her etiquette tutor.

"Ji'rai is keeping me busy." Shae answered, a fond smile finding its way onto her face as she thought of Xiac. She had to crane her head to look up at Ipla, who was tall even for a Rei-sa.

"Ji'rai," Ipla chuckled. "I had forgotten about that."

"What does it mean? You never told me." Shae jumped at the opportunity to ask. She'd felt awkward asking what it meant and had been waiting for way to ask in a way that didn't make her look silly. She knew it was ridiculous, she always looked silly to the Rei-sa, but old anxieties died hard.

"It is... an old term that has fallen out of usage and relevance. Our society used to be more focused upon individual partnership, and we did not have the safeties in place that we do now. Children would occasionally lose their parents and have nowhere else to go. A Ji'rai would take them in and protect them. Some equivalents in english would be... hmm... 'matron' 'mother' 'savior' 'guardian' 'owner.' They all come close. Does that answer your curiosities?"

Shae wasn't terribly surprised by the answer. Her other guess was that she'd been calling Xiac some kinky Rei-sa version of Mistress or something, so to find out she'd kinda been calling her 'mom' wasn't really very shocking. Part of her wanted to be a little weirded out by it, but given that she was on an alien spaceship, she was a little past being weirded out by anything.

"So its it's a little strange for me to be calling her by the title, then?" She felt a little guilty probing like this, Ipla wasn't really there to teach her about culture, but it wasn't about to stop her.